Question regarding the FAN used by WD My Cloud EX2

ClarksonCote · July 26, 2017, 10:27pm

So the script updates I made are working now, to include monitoring of drive state and to not measure drive temperatures when they’re sleeping, which prevents them from waking back up. I’ve set my interval at 900, or 15 minutes. If it’s set to 10 minutes or less, you risk having the script keep the drives awake by checking their temperatures, since WD sleeps them after 10 minutes of inactivity. Some additional coding could remove this limitation.

See the logging below. When the program had started, the drives had been sleeping for several hours before I copied the latest version of the program over and ran it. So with a 10-20 minute interval of the drives on, the system temperature increased by 3C, and then began cooling down again when the drives went back to sleep. It’s clear that, with the drives sleeping, the system temperature does stay a lot lower, as shown here. So for people that are concerned about temperatures, enabling the drives to sleep may help. The other quirk to get them to sleep successfully is to change the Twonky rescan interval for enabled media servers, as the default is to scan continuously (sigh).

I also like this latest version because I can see in the logging if my drives are sleeping, which could help people to troubleshoot items that may be keeping them awake (like a persistent Twonky scan).

2017-07-26 16:27:14  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 46  Hd1: 34  Hd2: 34  - Drive Status... Hd1: Active   Hd2: Active   - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 16:42:20  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 49  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 16:57:25  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 48  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 17:12:30  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 48  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 17:27:36  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 47  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 17:42:41  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 47  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 17:57:46  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 47  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM
2017-07-26 18:12:51  program_fan - STATUS: Temperatures... Sys: 47  Hd1: NA  Hd2: NA  - Drive Status... Hd1: Standby  Hd2: Standby  - Fan... Index: 0 Speed: 0 RPM

scotty03921 · July 28, 2017, 3:26am

By the way, a nice side effect of my current code edits is that I also log the drive status (Active vs. Standby) so if someone was concerned about whether or not their drives were sleeping, and for how often, this script now accomplishes that as well.

This one is worth the price of admission! I’d love to know the wakefulness of my drives.

My current understanding is that the whole directory structure outside of the /shares area is not on the installed hard drives, but on some smaller storage area that’s integral to EX2’s system board. I could be mistaken, but the drives do sleep even while I write this log file to a location outside the /shares directory. Do you have additional insight here?

None whatsoever

Yet…

ex6TB: du -sh /*
26K /CacheVolume
563K /bin
32K /dev
4.5M /etc
6.0K /home
3.6M /lib
0 /linuxrc
12K /lost+found
3.7T /mnt
0 /nfs
1.0K /opt

[/proc info elided]

0 /proc
1.0K /root
1.0K /sbin
1.0K /shares
0 /sys
2.0K /system
3.6M /tmp
679M /usr
21M /var

There isn’t an awful lot outside of /mnt (everything in /shares is a symlink into /mnt, do an 'ls -l /shares | grep -v mnt’ to see it quickly), maybe 700 MB all up. I could see WD easily fitting that stuff into a small and cheap FLASH or something; thumb drive-class FLASH would suffice, no SSD durability-extension strategies needed. It would also allow easy swapping in of new drives; after all, the EX makes this simple, and you don’t seem to have to do anything special to get an OS on the new drive, though I’ve never done it so can’t be sure. So the OS lives elsewhere.

I think you’re right, only /shares stuff lives on the HDs! Your logs, in relation to the amount stored in /usr, would be tiny, so putting them in /var/log/ forever without cleanup is probably fine.

I’ll also note, when I did a reboot of the EX2, the program_fan script disappeared from /usr/local/bin and I needed to copy it back over. I’d like to also determine where the best location is for it, and ideally not have it obliterated on a reboot. Ideally, I’d also have a permanent cron job (that the EX2 also wouldn’t obliterate) to check for program_fan running and to start it if it is not.

I keep a bash_profile in /shares/Public//, and it seems to survive reboots, though it’s been a while since I last rebooted. Surviving firmware updates is a similar problem, I believe. Store these guys somewhere in /shares; you’ll only access them once in a while, maybe only once after boot, or when actively working on the drive with ssh, so the keep-awake aspect won’t be a problem. And since they’re user data, WD won’t dare to erase or replace them.

I’ve always put program_fan where you see below, not in /usr/local/bin:

nohup /shares/Public/bin/program_fan -t 600 -S > /shares/Public/fanLog.txt 2<&1 &

I made the fanLog public so I could see it easily from the Finder in macOS, ditto Windows/Linux. And now, to keep the drives from waking at each log(), I guess I’ll move it.

But I realize the scripts etc shouldn’t be in Public, or thumb-fingered users might mess with them. Looking at /shares/Public:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 May 18 23:48 Public → /mnt/HD/HD_a2/Public

Maybe it would be best to create /mnt/HD/HD_a[12]/mystuff/ and stick everything custom under there, except stuff running under cron and the like, and churning items like logs, which would wake the drive. I would hope, but can’t say for sure, that /mnt/HD/HD_a*/ are as sacrosanct as any other user data and that WD wouldn’t touch them. Then they’d be private except to an ssh login. Putting everything on both drives protects against one of them failing, though I’d also keep a copy on my computer.

This is kinda fun!

ClarksonCote · July 29, 2017, 3:25am

So I haven’t forgotten about this and cleaning up/uploading my code changes, but I’m on a bit of a tangent for the moment. Having an FTP issue where a new IP camera is automatically banned from FTP, and deleting it from the ban just gets it re-banned. My attention is temporarily on that for the moment.

mayanoglu · August 9, 2017, 6:39pm

Hi everybody,

I dont know if my problem is related to sth. about the FAN issues but I experience serious disk temperature read errors in My Cloud EX2 Ultra

I have 2x2TB WD RED disks in Spanning RAID mode. All of a sudden the device shows System Under Temperature notification but of course the room temperature doesn’t suddenly fall down to 0°C. It says “The system temperature is below the specific minimum temperature. Move the system to a warmer location” and “The system temperature is within the normal specified temperature range” consecutively for 9 or 10 times. At the same time diagnostics read Disk1 temp:0°C, and Disk2 temp:42°C. The fan works at a normal speed like 3500-4000 RPM. When i check the logs i find “HWlib unable read HD1 temperature” record. When i do a system test at first it gives me only system temperature fault but after a few minutes it also gives drive1 fault.

After rebooting or hibernating-turning on or system restore everything turns to normal with no disk or temp error but these solve the problem only for until next time. Each time this happens after 10 minutes or so i lose all my connection to the dashboard and the system becomes unreachable.

I strongly feel this is something about the temperature sensors. I do not want to lose my archieve in the disks so i couldn’t try changing the raid mode or format the disks. Has anybody ever experienced anything like this before and found a solution? I would really appreciate your comments, thanks.

ClarksonCote · August 12, 2017, 2:37pm

Hi mayanoglu,

When you get the temperature read issues, have you tried reading the temperatures directly through an ssh terminal using the command below?
fan_control -g 0

It may be that your hard drive is experiencing a problem with its sensor and may need a replacement. I have not personally heard of anything specific to WD’s (sometimes poor) implementation that could cause the behavior you’re seeing.

ClarksonCote · August 12, 2017, 2:41pm

Below is a link to the updated program_fan code that I’ve been using (I’ve bumped it to version 0.5 from 0.3). As a reminder, the changes allow the installed drives to successfully stay asleep when they are configured to do so through your own MyCloud configuration settings. When the MyCloud isn’t accessed much throughout the day, sleeping the drives is the best way to keep them cool. The temperatures are substantially cooler when the drives sleep.

Preventing the script itself from waking the drives back up is accomplished by avoiding temperature readouts of the drives when they are asleep. I also added some additional logging details when logging is enabled.

Recommended usage:

Copy into /usr/local/bin and then do the following commands:
Change permissions so program is executable:
chmod 500 /usr/local/program_fan
Start script independent of ssh session.
nohup /usr/local/bin/program_fan -t 900 -L > /var/log/program_fan.log 2<&1 &
-t 900 sets the script loop to run every 15 minutes
-L enables logging
The remaining portion of the command redirects all logging into the log file/path specified, i.e. /var/log/program_fan.log As an aside, the location referenced in this example code is separate from the installed drives, so writing the log here will not wake up the drives if they’re sleeping.

Note that if you restart your MyCloud or there’s a power outage, the script gets wiped and you need to perform the above steps again. I’m considering a setup that will automatically re-copy the script and execute it on startup, but it’s a lower priority for me.

Feedback welcome!

martin953 · August 29, 2017, 8:39am

Hi everybody!

I’m the owner of WD My Cloud Mirror Gen2 8 TB and my drives (2 WD Red’s) were constantly running at around 52º C, so I was among others who were concerned about high operating temperature of WD My Cloud drives.
I’ve read this thread top to bottom and accumulated suitable solution (at least for me it is). Basically, My Cloud OS already have temperature controlling program (daemon), we only need to make it do it’s job somewhat more passionate. The temperature thresholds are stored in four .xml files in /etc/wd/ folder:

BVBZ-thermal.xml  BWAZ-thermal.xml  BWVZ-thermal.xml  BWZE-thermal.xml

Each file is meant for particular WD NAS model.
То determine what file is used for your device you need to login to your WD NAS via ssh and run the following command:

 ps | grep wdtms

The output will be something like this:

 5434 root     33984 S    /opt/wd/bin/wdtms -config=/etc/wd/BWVZ-thermal.xml

So, the My Cloud Mirror uses BWVZ-thermal.xml and yours might be different. Anyway, this is а fairly simple xml config file and by changing it contents we could force the fan to run faster. Obviously, any configuration changes are forgotten upon reboot, so we do need to manipulate this settings after every restart. This is how I do it now:

Change current directory to Public:

cd /mnt/HD/HD_a2/Public

Create two files in Public folder. First wdmc_lower_drive_temperature with following content:

#!/bin/sh
sed -i -f wdmclowtemp.sed /etc/wd/BWVZ-thermal.xml
/etc/init.d/wdtmsd restart

Of course you need to substitute BWVZ with what you’ve got from your ps | grep wdtms output

Second wdmclowtemp.sed containing this:

s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_extreme"/"65.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_extreme"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_pending"/"61.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_pending"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_danger"/"57.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_danger"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_hot"/"52.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_hot"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_warm"/"44.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_warm"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_content"/"42.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_content"/
s/"[0-9][0-9].0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_cool"/"40.0" interval="300" goto="set_drv_cool"/

Obviously enough, values after second back slash represent different temperature thresholds. Those that are above I’ve got after a little of experimentation. They got my drive temperatures from around 52º C to around 43º C with fan speed floating from 4500 rpm to 8000 rpm depending on load.

Your mileage may vary, so you can experiment with those values on your own.

Set correct permissions (you only need to do it once):

chmod 700 wdmc_lower_drive_temperature

and execute script:

./wdmc_lower_drive_temperature

Just to be sure, you can check that wdtms is indeed running with

ps | grep wdtms

If not, type

/etc/init.d/wdtmsd start

and hit enter.

On next reboot you need to login via ssh again, cd to Public directory and execute script.

That’s it! You’ve got a lot cooler and a quite a bit noisier NAS beside you. I’m okay with noise, since it’s in my office, not at home. More importantly, I hope, it will now serve a lot longer. I understand WD’s desire to keep it quiet for us but I do not consent with risk of reducing MTBF over this. All in all I think it is a good example of bad thermal design.

Big thanx to twins and Ben_W for their findings!
And remember, if you do this, do it at your own risk. I’ve merely provided an example that worked for me. If you f##k this up, please, do not hold me responsible. This is a makeshift solution, so maybe someone will come up with something more elegant. Kudos!

TombRaiderFanatic · January 17, 2018, 8:31pm

How do you enter these commands?
I cannot see where you are able to do this.
thanks

martin953 · January 19, 2018, 5:58am

You need to ssh to your device.

Follow the red arrow and configure ssh access. Then connect to your My Cloud device via Terminal or PuTTY.
Use “sshd” for user name, e.g. ssh sshd@your.mycloud.ip.address

TombRaiderFanatic · January 19, 2018, 10:40pm

thank you, I have now gained access to ssh and have played with the fan control commands, proving that the fan does work and that cranking it up will reduce the drive temp.
I like the idea of your solution, however I did not get very far with it. I am using a My Cloud EX2 and have tried entering cd /etc/wd - but there is no such directory. I entered the command “ps | grep wdtms” and got the reply:

12262 root 2880 S grep wdtms

Which makes me wonder if there is any kind of fan control setup at all!

Any ideas?

martin953 · January 29, 2018, 6:20am

Sorry for late reply. I’m not a frequent visitor of this forum.
Dunno why you can’t cd to /etc/wd … You can try to root cd / and ls all existing directories and go from there.
May be, your firmware uses another way to control fan and temperature but that would be really strange, cause they are not very different devices.

mkilicar · March 26, 2018, 7:29pm

Hi, I want to get your thoughts on CPU temp control. I want to do the same thing that you did, but considering the CPU temperature.

   <!-- set component temperature state and continue -->
    <step name="start"             action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="1.0"  interval="10" goto="set_cpu_extreme" next="check_cpu_danger" />
    <step name="check_cpu_danger"  action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="3.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_danger"  next="check_cpu_warm" />
    <step name="check_cpu_warm"    action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="10.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_warm"    next="check_cpu_content" />
    <step name="check_cpu_content" action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="17.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_content" next="check_cpu_under" />
    <step name="check_cpu_under"   action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="greater_than" value="89.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_under"   next="check_cpu_cool" />
    <step name="check_cpu_cool"    action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="greater_than" value="16.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_cool"    next="check_mem_extreme" />

These numbers not seeming correct to me. Do you have any idea whether your method will work on CPU temp?
Thanks,

martin953 · March 27, 2018, 8:18am

mkilicar, tbh I don’t. It was all trial and error for me. Than again, why would you want to control CPU temp? It’s temperature not even shown in web interface and I think that installed ARM CPU is fairly simple to not be temperature-depended. Do you run many third party applications on your box to be concerned about CPU load? Anyway, cooling hard drives effectively cools CPU also, so why bother?

mkilicar · March 28, 2018, 12:07am

Thanks for the reply. Actually I just realized the group is EX2, but I have PR4100.
My main HHDs are mainly idle, so mostly very cold. I am using SSD for fast file access for my applications - nextcloud, plex, etc. But the problem is CPU thermal settings. Those numbers don’t look right to me.
I test with high CPU load and while CPU temp constantly inreases, without fan increment. The thing I’m not sure is, is it a bug or intentionally implemented that way?
Can you check what do you have on CPU settings? Mine is:

<step name="start"             action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="1.0"  interval="10" goto="set_cpu_extreme" next="check_cpu_danger" />
<step name="check_cpu_danger"  action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="3.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_danger"  next="check_cpu_warm" />
<step name="check_cpu_warm"    action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="10.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_warm"    next="check_cpu_content" />
<step name="check_cpu_content" action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="less_than"    value="17.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_content" next="check_cpu_under" />
<step name="check_cpu_under"   action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="greater_than" value="89.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_under"   next="check_cpu_cool" />
<step name="check_cpu_cool"    action="compare_temperature"    source="dts" index="*" comparison="greater_than" value="16.0" interval="10" goto="set_cpu_cool"    next="check_mem_extreme" />

GusBuchanan · February 9, 2019, 4:02am

Well I have read a lot on various blogs but couldn’t find a satisfactory solution. I live in QLD Australia where currently the outside temp is 35 deg C. The drive, being used in Span Mode, shut down on me recently, and when I looked at the dashboard it said it was in the mid 70 deg C. so I built a 30 mm high wooden box with 2 rectangular and one round hole in it and mounted my 2 NAS drives onto the box over the rectangular holes so the drives weight causes it to seal and over the round hole which is in the middle I mounted a 150mm computer fan running at 1000 rpm. The noise is extremely low but it managers to keep the temperatures of my EX2 NAS drive under 40 deg. My older LIVEDUO has never had a temperature excess problem.

Hanif · October 9, 2019, 3:28am

I have the same problem with my EX2 is there any solution for it ?

StrokeGuy2016 · October 9, 2019, 4:46am

This fan is only $11 on Amazon and works so well, that the system fan never turns on at all.

It has 3 speeds too and is so much quieter than the internal fan.

Perhaps this helps.

RotorBalls · November 27, 2019, 11:02pm

Thanks to those who recommended the Infinity fan. I recently bought 2 WD 8tb red drives for the ex2. Yes, they work, but tend to run hotter at about 56/57 degrees with no load. I then also recently installed plex which requires your nas to not sleep and so the fans were running non stop and tend to be quite noisy where I had the nas. This fan is extremely quiet and brought down my temps to 40 allowing the internal fan to not run anymore! Success!

Wdtemp · December 17, 2019, 4:18am

Just frustrates the poop out of me that WD can’t fix the fan controls. How easy it would be!
Bought some machine screws and nuts and mounted the infinity fan. Hokey
but works.

cs7404 · May 20, 2020, 10:29pm

not sure if you’re monitoring this thread … but i decided to implement your method, utilizing my the correct file “BVBZ…” for my application (EX2 Ultra), the only thing i did not do verbatim to your steps is that I created a new folder in Public and placed the 2 files inside that.
also using the same temperatures you are in your example.

my EX2 only has 1 drive installed.

getting the drive up to around 42-44C, the fan still registers 0 RPM in the diagnostics panel.
not sure if the temperatures that trigger the fan are some other temperature than the drive’s; which is displayed in diagnostics panel ?

I confirmed that the fan indeed works, by using the fan_control command from the earlier post.

i am wondering if something might have changed since 2017, where there may be other settings in another file that control when the fan spins up, or the procedure for doing this is now different than it was back then ?